A Catalan wish for our family and friends -

“menja bé, caga fort i no tinguis por a la mort!”
(Eat well, poop strong and don’t be afraid of death!)

So, yup, you guessed right - the Catalonian’s have a different outlook on Christmas. Lots of people throughout the world celebrate xmas with manger scenes, the three wise men show up, there’s baby Jesus (the reason for the season!), there’s usually a chicken so that the viewer knows that the baby jesus can eat eggs on the 26th.

But the Catalans have added an extra character - the “Caganer”. This adorable little scamp is often tucked away in some corner of the manger where he is not easily noticed. He’s hiding for a good reason. “Caganer” translates from Catalan to English as “pooper”, and that is exactly what our lil’ buddy is doing.

There’s an amazing variety of Caganers for sale at our local xmas market by the Catedral de Barcelona. Most of them are Barca footballers doing their fertilization thing, but you can also get George Bush, the angel Galadrial, even Santa Claus. You truly have not lived until you’ve seen a small plastic figurine of a squatting santa with his breeches down around his knees and a strained look on his tiny plastic face…

Then there’s the Tió de Nadal, which translates to “Christmas Log”. But most people call it the “Caga tió”, which means “pooping log”. Sort of redundant, yeah?

Your basic caga tió is a log propped up on four legs, with a bright, sunny, cheerful face painted onto one sawed end, wearing a jaunty blanket and a rakish red hat. And what do the Catalan kids do with this adorable personification of age-old pagan rites, come Christmas day? They beat him with a stick while singing mocking songs to him, until he poops out a present for everyone to eat, of course!!! duh…

The really crazy thing is that we’re honestly not overstating any of this, the Catalan xmas really is filled with lovable defecating scamp-like children’s mascots. Here’s some wikipedia for those wanting more details, and to see where we stole all of our quotes from:

• Our Laxative Log Lad
• Pooping Plastic Pal

Here’s a translation of a common caga tió song:

Pooping log,
poop turrón,
hazelnuts and cheese,
if you don’t poop well,
I’ll hit you with a stick.
Pooping log!

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 23rd, 2007 at 5:45 am by Corrie and is filed under Spain. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.